


Can't Shake These Old Shadows (Gnawing at Your Insides)

by KittyWillCutYou



Series: Step Through Shadows [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apocalypse, Body Horror, F/M, Gen, Hurts So Good, I like to hurt my favs, Kaguya fucks everything up even after she gets sealed, LET ME TELL YOU, M/M, Multi, Shikamaru is not in a good place, Time Travel, elderitch horrors, holy shit wtf, it happened, people have a very bad time, the world goes to shit, turning your favorite characters into demonic beings is so much goddamn fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 05:06:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15879153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyWillCutYou/pseuds/KittyWillCutYou
Summary: Shikamaru stared out into the stretch of dead earth that was once the lush expanse of Fire Country and beyond with eyes that had long-ago gone cold. It was only fitting that at the end of it all, they returned home. The crumbling remains of their village lying in wait like a tomb.The smell of the dead, of the rot, of the blood and demons no longer bothered him. The screaming had long-since died down to a low roar and the Earth churned with monsters from the deepest of blacks.





	Can't Shake These Old Shadows (Gnawing at Your Insides)

The world cried out at the end like a creature being tortured.

Murdered.

It was a brutal sound, more gut wrenching than anything that could possibly be put into words. It set one’s teeth on edge and shred eardrums until they bled and even then, the pain didn’t stop. It went on and on and on until suddenly, it cut out.

Only the corpse remained, the last twitches of its death throes rattling the bones of all the living. They’d all thought that their nightmare was over and that they had little else to fear but themselves again. They were so very wrong. 

Madara was gone, Zetsu annihilated and Kaguya beaten back, re-sealed, her minions destroyed. They thought that the worst had come to pass. It wasn’t fair. But when was life ever fair? 

Especially to shinobi.

Shikamaru stared out into the stretch of dead earth that was once the lush expanse of fire country and beyond with eyes that had long-ago gone cold. It was only fitting that at the end of it all, they returned home. The crumbling remains of their village lying in wait like a tomb. 

The smell of the dead, of the rot, of the blood and demons no longer bothered him. The screaming had long-since died down to a low roar and the Earth churned with monsters from the deepest of blacks. Kaguya’s madness would have stripped the world bare of Chakra and life, but her madness and greed had blinded her to the truth. 

Her bid for power woke something. Something old and terrible. They’d all been told the world had been shaped a certain way, but that wasn’t the entire truth. There was something else, something older, sleeping deep below, due to a power far greater than any of them could have possibly comprehended. Now it was awake and there was no stopping it.

And it _hungered_.

The Earth split open like an egg and out spilled the Dark, out spilled the Black, out spilled the Muck. Their hunger was insatiable, their bloodlust unquenchable, their mercy nonexistent. And the wold had thought that Kaguya was the worst of the worst. Laughter as cold as Winter’s bite shot across the sky, sounding through the air and chilling the blood in heated veins. 

The end had returned.

The Rabbit Goddess was no god at all. Just a fool. Just meat, just like the rest of them. The only comfort left to Shikamaru was the growing certainty that not even that crazy bitch’s prison would save her from becoming dinner just like the rest of them. There was no such thing as immortality. 

The only one constant was death. 

 

“How many are there?” The low rasping voice of his last remaining friend pulled Shikamaru from his ever darkening thoughts and brought with it the vaguest sense of calm familiarity. The sound of it calmed something in him, a feeling of bleak despair, and though it did not lessen the tension that threaded throughout his frame, he was grateful for the small distraction.

He turned his eyes from the horrors of the horizon. “Hundreds. Thousands. Too many.” he replied. They were fucked then, nothing unusual about that. Shikamaru pulled up some of the blackened earth beneath his feet where he crouched and examined it. Running so long, none of them had been able to take the time to worry about what they must have looked like.

Covered in mud and blood and dust. There was a chip running up the center of his nail, splitting it down to the bed and leaving it barely hanging on. He frowned and proceeded to tear the whole nail away with calloused fingers and let it fall to his feet. He felt a piercing gaze on him. 

They must have looked like ghouls, the two of them. He and Sakura perched upon a cliff made gods knew when, while the planet convulsed beneath their feet. Even covered in blood and dirt, she was still one of the most beautiful things he’d ever see. 

Hair shorn close to her scalp in a near buzz that showed the arching slash of scars proceeding from her hitai-ate, Sakura had grown from a fragile bud to willful blossom, basking in the sun. The hardship and wars that followed gave her thorns tipped in poison. She’d come into herself, become a force to be reckoned with that could finally stand on equal footing alongside those two powerhouses she’d called her teammates.

Then the world decided to fucking eat itself.

Now they were stretched too thin and ragged. Both of them just shy of starving and scarred to all hell despite Sakura’s near god-like healing abilities, the constant running and fighting and surviving had taken its toll on them all. Their love had come too little too late. 

They’d loved others and lost them just as quickly, Ino was the one for her and Temari for him and then they’d been torn from them, shredded down and eaten, bones and all. It left them near Inconsolable, but Sakura still had her teammates back then, the last of her family. They’d patched over the holes in each other as best they could while on the run, their hearts scarred over in the ways that only a shinobi’s heart could be.

Shikamaru lost Choji not long after Ino and for a while he thought he might implode, but Sakura had pulled him in to her team's circle and they welcomed him, help him, loved him. They’d lessoned the bleeding and patching over the holes. They’d held on for as long as possible. And then that was ripped apart as well and it was just the two of them. Now, Sakura had Kakashi’s eye hidden under her hitai-ate, Kyuubi’s chakra split between the two of them with seals on their palms, curling up their arms and along their shoulders to their hearts in intricate lines.

They’d raged when Sasuke died and Naruto’s inner light truly sputtered out. He’d made the seals that lay upon their skin with Kurama’s help without their knowing and when the end came from him, he’d reached out, ink and chakra and blood curling up their arms, Kurama screaming in their heads, raging, crying. 

Then silence and the memory of Naruto’s pleading eyes and Sasuke’s ashen face haunting them all with every flutter of their eyelids. Even Kurama went silent after that. Whenever they dared to reach out to him, split between them like he was, the pain of grief and rage nearly left them blind and reeling. It was too much, both halves stricken in the deafening silence of their crumbling mind-scapes.

Sakura’s only muted jade green eye met his gaze and held, her other eye covered up by a slanted hitai-ate, just like her late sensei. He knew just what scars lay beneath and the sight of the scratched metal deepened the yawning pit in his stomach. He remembered just like everything else, in almost perfect detail, the aftermath. Bad run in, eye unsalvageable and missing a bit of an ear. Blood everywhere.

Kakashi had shoved her to safety, always ready to give his own life for a teammate, for family. He’d paid the price and none of them would ever forget that day. The day they lost Kakashi. He’d never wanted to be Hokage, no matter the fact that he held the title for several years. He never even got the chance to properly scede the role to Naruto before things started to fall apart and the world began to rot.

But he’d still led them, even though he was already practically falling apart at the seams. Well before any of them, really. Even before what happened to Gai. Kakashi had still managed to paste on a smile back then. Remembering what happened to Gai, how Kakashi had been afterward, he probably welcomed death.

And then their numbers began to truly fall. Villages and cities destroyed, civilian and shinobi alike, their populations wiped out in droves, devoured alive, screaming as they were torn to shreds and the pieces strewn and fought over by teaming masses of beasts, without empathy or remorse.

The hides of the abominations rippled with their roars, gleaming wetly with blood and gods knew what else and now they watched them all, climbing from the dead Earth that birthed them, clawing and ripping at one another with the sky dyed bruise purple and blood red. “We can’t stay here.” Sakura hissed, moving to grasp at his arm and crouch at his side, pressing her heavy, smelly weight into him. 

She smelled like blood and rust. They both did. Their weapons were scavenged from battlegrounds, strapped to them in pouches and clothes, armor stolen off the dead.

The dead wouldn’t begrudge them their will to live no matter what it took anyway. And no, they couldn’t stay where they were. Shikamaru could feel it just as well as she could; the darkness and hunger keying in on them. If they stayed they’d be eaten and though a part of them longed for death, another would never forgive them if they didn’t at least try to go on living for as long as possible. 

“We have to go, we have to leave-” Sakura’s voice bordered hysterical in his ear as she tugged him up and away, watching the writing mass of human-like silhouettes and bodies writhe and scream on the horizon of the next mountain before a piece broke away. It wriggled and screamed before it suddenly grew thousans of arms. The creature was almost as big as a house and it turned, using its elongated appendages like legs before fixing numerous eyes as black as pitch on them. 

The surface of its body rippled like muddy water and then to took off in their direction with a scream. The sound of that noise always halted any suicidal ideation Shikamaru might have been entertaining at the time. It was always tempting right up until those things started screaming. Something about the noise.

It was just _wrong._

It made your soul want to curl up and wither. Death was not the escape you thought it might be, by letting these things have you. Hell awaited. It had already taken all of their friends, so they ran and the screaming followed. It shot after them, crawling and jumping on thousands of limbs, what passed for teeth flashing and the hands of the fallen reaching out from deep within its gaping maw.

Shikamaru’s cheeks were wet with tears he didn’t even realize had fallen, Sakura practically flying right beside him, through what was left of rock and dead foliage under their feet. They ran for their lives but the Muck, it kept gaining, kept coming, it’s mouth open wide. Something told him this would finally be the end for them both. 

And then it happened.

It only took a second. Sakura lost her footing just the tiniest bit and fell behind and tendrils and grasping, rotting hands burst from beneath her. Stone and Earth and dead foliage gave way to a writhing mass and caught Sakura’s ankle. The spirit went out of her eyes in an instant and Shikamaru could only look over his shoulder and watch as she smiled. Her hand close around his, the seal on their palms turning and unlocking, and Chakra spiked through him with a roar that made his teeth rattle.

Black sludge pour from her mouth and Shikamaru screamed as the life went out of that green eye and then someone _laughed_. The sound, so out of place and awful, it froze him. The sky quivered as time seemed to pause around them. Shikamaru couldn't bring himself to care, faced with the horror of it all, of an existence without Sakura. 

Shikamaru wanted to vomit. He wanted to die, but everything remained frozen with Sakura’s hand in his and Kurama’s chakra burning under his skin. Her body bulged with black sludge that would eat her flesh from the inside. Frozen. Her hitai-ate ripped away, the eye socket beneath open and empty. **“No, no, no,”** Said a booming voice, **“That won’t do. There’s only one of you left now. Just one, just one.”**

The world began to rip and tear away like a ruined roll of old film played through a projector and Shikamaru tried to hold desperately onto Sakura’s hand, aware of his own tears and screaming and cursing before he was practically ripped away and left floating in the dark. **“Poor little mortal, poor little thing.”** The voice coed to him and suddenly Shikamaru was left staring up at a towering figure of black.

It was impossible to determine any specific features or gender just by looking, but Shikamaru got the definite impression it was grinning at him. The shock of near death and Sakura’s sudden absence left him cold and he knew that if he didn’t focus, he would shake apart. Was this some kind of dream? The last of the noise within his mind before it finally shut down? He couldn’t say.

The being arched and then leaned down, towering over him, what was likely its ‘face’ nearly meters from his own and dwarfing him. Something shiny and black on its surface fluttered followed by hundreds of others and he realized it must have been blinking at him. “What-...what the hell are you?” 

It started to cackle. It's form practically shivering with laughter that rippled over its frame in waves. **“What indeed,”** It agreed with a bobbing of its head and then it lifted up it’s hand and held delicately between it’s fingers was something that glinted red. The three tomoe spinning in the center were a dead give away and Shikamaru felt one of his teeth crack with how hard he’d clenched his jaw at the sight of it.

“Give it to me!” He hissed, scrambling to take back the last remaining piece of his lover and friend, but it was held out of his reach. **“Ahh Ahh Ahh,”** The creature tutted, raising the eye away from his frantic grasping hands like a child playing keep-away. **“There there, little shadow, you’ll get this soon I promise. But first, I’ve come to make a deal with you.”**

A part of him wanted to rage and scream, but his mind made him pause. Despite everything, he was still a Nara and his mind told him to assess the situation. He was either dead or dying….or this was real. After a time, his desperate grasping hands dropped back to his sides and he fixed the towering entity with shrewd dark eyes. “What kind of deal?” More laughter and the creature held the eye (Obito's, Kakashi's, _Sakura's eye_ ) up to the smooth curve of what passed for its face.

It quivered.

 **“This world is dead.”** It hissed, its body moving in a way reminiscent of a snake despite it’s somewhat human looking proportions. **“That bitch, the "mother of all Chakra" called herself a goddess yes, but there were things before, there was power _before_ and then the Dark came. The Muck. It came and it ate up everything.”** Its face came down to hover over Shikamaru and its surface quivered before hundreds of eyes opened, turning from black to white, their irises silver and bright and swirling. **“It ate and ate and ate, all the people, all the animals, all the life and we made it sleep. And the world started anew.”**

It rose up and up above him, higher and higher until it towered like nothing he’d ever seen and it quivered with so much anger and rage, Shikamaru nearly lost himself to it. Then the feeling was gone, though the rage in its eyes never lessoned. **“There’s nothing left to save now.”** It admitted. **“But in the past, in a world parallel to this one, that is not so.”** Shikamaru was not sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

Far be it for him to call bullshit after the things he’d see, the horrors he’d witnessed. Naruto had been contemplating something as impossible as time travel before his death, when there had still been more than a few of them left, but he’d died before anything had actually come of it. The thought of his death made Shikamaru’s knees shake, heat prickling at the backs of his dry eyeballs. 

“And what exactly do you want from me?” He could guess and it was truly tempting, but as smart as he was, he wasn’t sure how much of a difference he could make. He was battered and near broken, the strength he’d gained over the years gained through desperation and mania. There were better choices, but they were all dead. 

The creature trilled a laugh again, eyes opening up along its neck and shoulders in different directions before glossing over with black and going dormant again, like sweeping onyx faceted stones. **“Let me send you there!”** It crowed. **“Let me make you _more_ than what you are, little shadow, and I’ll send you there. In exchange, you will stop this world from becoming a husk! My brothers and sisters were asleep and too weak to keep themselves from being devoured, but you will wake them long before then.”**

It looked at him with all its eyes and smiled, white teeth fitting together like stalactites and glinting in nonexistent light. **“You will suffer, boy, but you will be more than you are and you will take this eye and that burning chakra in your veins and you will live to save your precious people.”** Honestly, there was little choice in the matter. **“Do we have a deal?”**

‘Troublesome’ did not do this situation justice.

Shikamaru stood still as a statue in the endless dark, floating on nothing, the rags of his armour fluttering about his aching bruised and painfully lean limbs. The faces of his friends washed through his mind; their smiles and their lifeless eyes. The blood and icor spilling from their mouths and eyes and noses as they were eaten alive would forever haunt him. 

He wanted to _die_. 

He wanted to cease to exist and be with them in their endless hell, but he knew what they would say. He knew what they would want for him.

What he wanted didn’t matter faced with a choice like this.

Not anymore. 

“Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I have no idea if I'm actually going to continue this, but I wanted my favs to have a very very bad time and I regret nothing.


End file.
